Large flowered but leaves don't look right for grandis
Vernal pool
Excellent find by @prakrit
Photo license and credit belong to the Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH), the Hakai Institute, and MarineGEO | http://specifyportal.flmnh.ufl.edu/iz/ | Field Number: BHAK-3147 | This observation is a part of the collaborative work between FLMNH, the Smithsonian Institution's Marine Global Earth Observatory (MarineGEO) and Tennenbaum Marine Observatories Network, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, and the Hakai Institute
Roughly 100 plants along the trail
Plume moth on honeysuckle (Lonicera hispidula). Saw several of these micromoths [~5-7mm long, not counting antennae] at Long Ridge at two locations about 1/2 mile apart], and the moths all showed a strong attraction to the honeysuckle.
Chlorops quinquepunctata: Third antennal segment entirely orange ; a pale yellow to reddish species with five conspicuous black spots, on the humeri, the mesopleurae, and the ocellar tubercle. Sabrosky 1935
This was quite large for a chloropid.
Manzanar National Historic Site, Inyo County, Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains, California
Type locality. Tough to find, but tends to occur in the deep decomposed granite. Here found growing with Ivesia santolinoides.
No clue on this one. It has avery interesting banding pattern on the rear abdomen area.
I was looking for the near-mythical Helminthoglypta liodoma near the Kern River, but found instead Helminthoglypta cypreophila kernensis. Heavily malleated shell like Southern Shoulderband. In fact, this snail was first described by Berry as a subspecies of Southern Shoulderband. Also at the site were shells of Helminthoglypta berryi, but I was unable to find a live one. I returned at night but was kicked out by a security guard who was probably employed to protect the nearby solar array, but was adamant that the entire area is under his protection. I also searched the nearby type locality for H. berryi but found no shells and no snails. This is on the road up to Round Mountain through abandoned oil fields and grazing land, and everything was fenced so I was restricted to the road berms.
By location in Erskine Canyon, just east of the town of Lake Isabella, Kern County, this should be Helminthoglypa stageri, but I am not confident of the taxonomy of the snails in this area. It might be H. isabella, or perhaps the two are synonymous. It is a subadult, and was out around midnight, 45º F. (photo from the next morning)
Leaves look a lot like culinary sage.
Another observation buried in the files. I recall thinking this was N. orientalis at the time.
Spotted by @mreala
This is the common species in Caliente Canyon in Kern County. It is probably undescribed. The dark body is partly a photographic artifact - when it is stretched out the body is paler. This one was in the same area as H. berryi.
lower Caliente Creek riparian. Small juvenile, found under an old fencepost. An adult shell was nearby in a small talus pile.
Round Mountain Road. Found crawling on the road at night following rains. A second individual was on a dirt bank in a small side gully near the road. This is near the type locality, and consists of grassy hills with soil derived from volcanic ash and sand.
Under valley oak logs. What a weird Helminthoglypta!
Forms dense aggregations of shell-incrusted tubes about 5 mm diameter in sandy sediments on top of and between rocks in wave-protected, low intertidal habitat.
3rd image: hood of tube.
4th image: feeding tentacles extending from hood.
5th image: worm removed from tube (tube as shown 121 mm long, but probably missing part of posterior end)
6th image: close-up of worm
7th image: worm in MgCl2
8th image: detail of gills
Images 3-8 of worm collected from same locality on 20 January 2019.
No pigmentation, was fairly docile just trying to burrow to escape
One lone individual revealed itself when the clouds started to break things up. Short flights - I chased it around for a while before it flew off into the pickleweed.
It's amazing to me the abundance of such a rare endemic to several of our local parks and byways! Here, Big Canyon Park.
growing along the fence line
On Muller's Oak